


Now Mud Lies Down Again

by Westwardflight



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Drunken rambles, Gen, M/M, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-21
Updated: 2013-02-21
Packaged: 2017-11-30 01:11:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/693636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Westwardflight/pseuds/Westwardflight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He will fight with his friends, he will die with them. It is only proper. But it is too much to expect him to watch them live.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Now Mud Lies Down Again

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you, Amine_Eyes, for your wonderful beta-ing.
> 
> Apologies for any plot/character errors, it has been over a decade since I read the brick and this is my first fic in the fandom. Concrit most definitely welcome.

Shame makes his body ache as he finishes the bottle of wine.

Grantaire the drunk. Grantaire the cynic. Grantaire the failure. No one will seek him out, though surely they all know where he is.

He is nothing without Les Amis, without Enjolras. What is a creature of shadow without the sun? Invisible and impossible. He would simply cease to be. But he can’t bear it down there, the hushed conversations in the dark, the reminiscing, the impending threat of a violent and pointless death. 

Of course it is pointless. There is no glory, no justice in it, just maggots and worms. If they are lucky, they will receive a pauper’s funeral. More likely, they will rot in the streets, anonymous and unmissed. 

Life might be meaningless, but it can be glorious. Death is always death, cold and final.

The people of France will remain safely tucked away in their beds, unaware of the school boys dying in their name. He is not so foolish to think they would care even if they knew. Why should they? It is presumptuous to believe that they would support this half-baked revolution. A group of self-important nobodies are not the flint that will start the fire of revolt. The best they can hope for is that they will burn brightly for a moment, before the ash settles.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Even the finest marble can crumble.

He will fight with his friends, he will die with them. It is only proper. But it is too much to expect him to watch them live. 

He rests his head on the table.

...

He startles awake when someone storms into the wine shop in the early hours. He can feel the beginning of a hangover pressing behind his eyes as he peers into the darkness. He didn’t think anyone would come to find him here. He didn’t think anyone would come to find him at all - they have no use for him, not even tonight at the end of all things. 

He is cannon fodder. Another corpse that will prop up the Republic.

Though all he can offer in return is his cold, wormy body, Grantaire will always have need for them. He orbits Apollo just as surely as the earth orbits the sun. Enjolras is his gravity, keeping him from spinning out into the cosmos, alone in the dark.

Even now, he recognises the pull of Enjolras’ eyes on him. It is a gaze that would make lesser men quake and quail. Seconds, minutes, hours, an infinity passes as Enjolras stares at him, breathing heavily. 

There is something desperate and afraid trying to claw its way out from behind Enjolras’ eyes even though his face is impassive.

Grantaire scrambles for something to say, something clever or witty or flirtatious. Some eloquent nonsense to amuse and frustrate his fledgling god, if only for a second. Anything to soothe that desperate, panicking thing stirring beneath Enjolras’ eyes.

Cracked marble must be patched, but he fears he lacks the tools. 

Everything he touches ends up broken. But what is it to fix him? Smoothe the marble, straighten his jacket, and send him off to die.

Apollo must be made whole. There is simply no way around it.

The silence drags around them, a pall keeps the outside world muffled and distant.

Enjolras beats him to the punch. “Eponine is dead.” The words fall flat and heavy, stirring up the dust as they hit the ground with a _thud_. It is strange, hearing such tones from their fearless leader. His words usually flutter and soar, echoing proudly for an audience begging for more.

The voice of a revolution.

“I know.” He meets Enjolras’ eyes for a moment, then glances away. The fear in his eyes makes the world tilt beneath Grantaire’s feet. This is not how it is meant to be.

“More will follow.” All of them will follow. It is written in the stars.

“I know.” A simple inevitability. His friends will die screaming before the night is out. 

France is a hard mistress, feasting on the blood of her youth. She is gluttonous. Their deaths will merely whet her appetite as she continues to cannibalise her people.

“What if it comes to nought?” Enjolras paces tight circles in the small space. “They would be content but for me. They would grow fat and happy; they would get married and raise beautiful children.” They would live. He does not say the words, but Grantaire hears them nonetheless. 

It is a beautiful image. There were moments, turning points, where they could have had those futures. Where they could live long and happy lives, looking back fondly on their misspent youth. Time would wear down the edges of their radicalism until it is unrecognisable.

Except Enjolras, of course. He is defined by his adoration of Patria, by his veneration, by his impossible dreams for what she could become. Enjolras could not exist at any other time, in any other way.

Where Enjolras leads, Grantaire will follow. So it is, so it should be.

Grantaire opens his mouth to interrupt, but Enjolras silences him with a look. “It is true. They would drink and argue and make impassioned speeches, but I am the spark. I am the reason they have to die.”

“Do not underestimate them, Apollo. They are intelligent, passionate young men capable of making their own decisions. You are not responsible for their choices any more than you are responsible for the tides.” 

The lies scrape at his throat, leaving it raw. He glances longingly at the bottle on the table.

Enjolras starts to argue, but Grantaire speaks over him. Something deep in his chest aches for his Apollo. Reality was never supposed to tarnish Enjolras; he was destined to walk above such petty things as fear and doubt. “You are well practiced at ignoring me, but try to listen, just this once. For Patria, Orestes, and for the people, you have to press on. For me, the drunken cynic who worships at your feet.”

Enjolras surges forward, grasping Grantaire’s arm. The heat of his grip is almost shocking. “I am not a statue, Grantaire. Not a cold and distant god from Olympus, holding court here on earth, whatever you might believe. I want them to live.” There is an undercurrent in Enjolras’ words, but Grantaire’s bones ache with exhaustion and he can’t quite tease out the meaning without drowning in it.

He kisses Enjolras on the cheek. “Do you think I give my faith easily? There is nothing else in the entire cosmos, in heaven or in hell, I believe in, but I believe in you.”

Alexander had his Hephaistion. Achilles had Patroclus. Orestes had Pylades. Enjolras is surrounded by his lieutenants, by his friends, but it is Grantaire he sought out.

“Why are you here, Enjolras? What use is a winecask to marble?” He doesn’t plead, which is, in all honesty, an achievement, however pitiful that might be.

Enjolras is silent for a moment, then leans in and kisses Grantaire, hot and fierce.

For a moment, for a fraction of a second, he is complete. He is chosen by Apollo himself, the acolyte ascends the mountain. The aching emptiness that gnaws at him in the small hours, that he fills with drink and whores, is filled with something new. It is a heavy, curling thing that creeps down his spine and settles low in his belly. His fingers are tangled in Enjolras’ curls before he could even think about stilling his hand; his other hand sits on Enjolras’ waist, pulling him closer.

He catches a fleeting glimpse of a future, a glorious future, where they rut together on the filthy mattress in his filthy apartment. Where they exchange lazy kisses. Where they live, together, and the world doesn’t end in blood and fire in the pale dawn light.

Enjolras whimpers, a small and broken sound, and Grantaire feels that future slip through his fingers and shatter into impossibly small pieces on the dusty floor. 

“I will not be your clay feet. You are made for the skies, and I am a creature of the gutter, made for the mud.” Even as he says it, his fingers tighten around Enjolras’ waist. 

“How do you stand it? The doubt?” 

Apollo has lost his way, everything is topsy turvy. The sky above is dark as the soil below. What is the sun without the sky?

“I have no doubts. My faith in you is sincere and whole.” Grantaire is made of the earth. He cannot get lost, he is unable to soar. 

Enjolras rests his forehead against Grantaire’s. “If I could have the future, R, it could have been with you.” 

The use of his nickname makes his breath catch. It is an unexpected kindness on a cold summer night.

Enjolras’ future is death, young and glorious. A death befitting Achilles, even as Patroclus prays that the prophecy can be re-written. But perhaps their deaths are necessary. Perhaps they will be drag the citizens of Paris from their beds, rouse them to action. 

The pitiful attempt at idealism tastes bitter on his tongue.

Everyone is equal when they are dead, even demi-gods. 

He has to pull away before his resolve crumbles. “If you sought that future, then you would no longer be my god made flesh; my Apollo knows no love besides Patria,” he murmurs, kissing his cheek once more then turning away.

“Why do you stay?” Enjolras asks, his breathing ragged.

He shrugs, if only to give his hands something to do besides grasping for the bottle. “Where else would I go?” 

“That isn’t an answer.”

“Maybe I could not bear to live in a world in which I am right. Maybe my cynicism and skepticism and nihilism are only skin deep and I long to be corrected. Perhaps I secretly support you cause. Perhaps I am even willing to die for it. I am a creature of contradictions, my dear - the cynic fighting for a cause, the atheist who believes in god, the drunk who is sober.” 

He is too sober. This is not a conversation for sobriety.

“That is finely spoken, but I do not believe it for a second.”

He laughs, but it is a hoarse and ugly thing. Never before had the siren song of brandy been so fierce. His soul is unused to restraint and sincerity, it is tired and hurting and needs to be soothed. 

“I die here with you, or I die alone in a gutter somewhere. If you must die, and I rather fear you must, then it is my place to die by your side, at your feet, wherever you would have me.”

It is a complicated mess of an ‘I love you’, but he suspects Enjolras gets the point regardless judging by the momentary softness in his eyes. It is gone in a flash though, replaced by something hard and cold.

His beautiful marble god has returned, prepared for war, assured of his place on Olympus. 

Vive la France. Long may she reign.

He is a more successful Pylades than anyone could have expected. It is bittersweet. He mattered, for a moment. He was chosen. He captivated Orestes, urged him onwards, urged him upwards, urged him to march to his death.

The fates are not indifferent, they are cruel.

Enjolras makes it as far as the door before he turns back to Grantaire. “Leave,” he says. It is an order, Grantaire has no doubts about that. “You don’t believe in the cause and I will not have you dying for me.” It is the only order Enjolras could issue that he will not obey. He will not be sent away.

“But what a death it will be,” Grantaire replies. He tries to smile, but it will not sit right on his face.

A look of familiar frustration settles on Enjolras face, and for a moment the world is as it should be. 

Grantaire the contrarian.

He can only be what he is.

“You will die for your cause, and I will die for mine.” The last of his resolve crumbles as he reaches for the brandy.

Enjolras leaves without looking back. Grantaire, the disappointment once more. The burn of brandy is almost enough to soothe the irrational stab of grief and rejection. Almost.

...

It is only when he wakes up, still too drunk to be hungover, and sees the stricken look on Enjolras’ face that he understands. 

It doesn’t change the outcome. Nothing could change the outcome. 

Their death is inevitable, irresistible, inexorable. This is their destiny, whether Enjolras likes it or not, and Grantaire would not change it. But perhaps Enjolras was not just being kind, and perhaps he is not the only one who needlessly complicates things as complicated as ‘I love you, you infuriating man’.

For once in his life, more than anything else, he wants to believe.

“Do you permit it?”

Enjolras takes his hand. 

Grantaire meets death with a smile upon his face.


End file.
